Renting is a part of life. It's something that many people experience at some point in their lives. The concept of renting may involve real property or personal property. With personal property, the cost of renting is usually less than the actual value of the property being rented.
A “renter” or “leasor” refers to a person, group of people or an entity that is renting or leasing real or personal property to another party, namely a rentee or leasee. A rentee or leasee refers to a person, group of people or an entity that is renting or leasing property from a renter or leasor. The renter must have a certain degree of trust in order to rent to a rentee. This is overcome for the most part through a security deposit. For example, when renting a power tool at a rental center, the renter may ask the rentee to leave an open credit card slip or may ask for cash or may simply ask for a driver's license. With real property rentals, there is also usually a security deposit in place in case of a skipped payment or excessive cleaning fees. Many people have their first experience with security deposits when they move away to college and need to rent a dorm room or apartment. As is often the case, the security deposit is paid but either a portion or all of the security deposit is not returned at the conclusion of the rental period.
Some common reasons that renters justify keeping this money is because of cleaning fees, missing items or simply items not being returned in the same condition that they were lent. For example if a renter claims that the rentee damaged the property, one way that a rentee can respond is to show evidence in the form of lists, marked diagrams, notes, pictures etc., all determined at in the beginning of the rental period. Often times, the rentee is not legally savvy enough or simply not conscientious enough to collect this evidence at the appropriate times. The end result being that the rentee loses part or all of the deposit.
Thus, there exists a need for a system and method of collecting this evidence at the appropriate times and securely storing the evidence. Furthermore, there exists a need to be able to determine an amount of the deposit based on a comparison between a condition of the rental property at the start of the rental period to a condition of the rental property at the conclusion of the rental period. As presently disclosed, this system will preferably be able to create a differential image(s) or a differential list, which cites or makes evident the differences in the two conditions. Even more, this system could also possess the ability to identify the items and evaluate the differences in conditions and the differences in price. This could also correlate to a percentage of any deposit amount that had been paid.